Beloved Bostonian Ben Affleck was on television today, but not on the usual channels — he was testifying at a Senate hearing on C-SPAN regarding foreign aid and international diplomacy. But before discussing this serious topic, he managed to drop a bit of a spoiler for the upcoming Batman film while giving a shoutout to a longtime New England senator. More

It’s official: One Direction member Zayn Malik is leaving One Direction.

After being spotted at a U.K. club allegedly flirting with a woman who was not Perrie Edwards, his fiancee, the outrage and intense speculation began. While Malik originally planned rejoin the group in South Africa after a short stint away from their tour, the band released a statement today shedding light on their plans to go forth without him:

“After five incredible years Zayn Malik has decided to leave One Direction. Niall, Harry, Liam and Louis will continue as a four-piece and look forward to the forthcoming concerts of their world tour and recording their fifth album, due to be released later this year.”

It’s amazing how easy it is to stay in whatever part of town you usually stay in. Especially in cold weather, Bostonians become creatures of habit, cycling between three or four favorite bars or restaurants as close to work or home as possible. More

April Fool’s Day hasn’t even arrived yet, but Google Maps is already having their fun. You can now turn any place, any city, any neighborhood into a game of Pacman. All you have to do is select your favorite area (in Boston, of course), click on the Pacman icon on the bottom left corner and you can begin gobbling up little dots on your screen.More

The stars were out in full force for Comedy Central’s roast of Justin Bieber, which aired last night. While many of the jokes got pretty harsh, the panelists mostly stuck to topics that seemed Bieber-approved. But one joke, delivered by comedian and Bill Cosby career destroyer Hannibal Buress, was so painfully true that it was cut from the broadcast. More

While Cards Against Humanity is most famous for creating some of the most awkward moments at your most recent family get-together, they’re dipping their toes into social justice and outreach via a recently released new deck entitled the “Cards Against Humanity Science Ambassador Scholarship.” More

Saying Night Shift has come a long way in the last several years is a bit of understatement at this point. The brewery has ramped things up so much over the last few years that the ghost-white sheetrock walls of its first facility in Everett are surely as distant a memory for the brewers as the neon, 10-gallon orange homebrew buckets the three first used in a Ball Square kitchen to prototype beers. More

At the end of Planet Waves, Bob Dylan sings “Time is all I have to give/ you can have it if you choose.” That’s always seemed like an apt description for the relationship between a film and its audience. When you commit to watching a movie, you’re agreeing to forfeit a small fraction of your life. And the filmmakers themselves – they’re bound, as well. Whoever they were when they made a movie, wherever they were in their lives, the film preserves those moments for posterity. More

Scottish indie-pop mainstays Belle & Sebastian played to a packed House of Blues on Monday night in support of their recently-released 9th studio LP, Girls In Peacetime Want to Dance. Fellows Scots Honeyblood opened the show.

Professional fighter Ronda Rousey is everywhere these days. She’ll be taking over the silver screen this weekend in the newest Fast and the Furious film, Furious 7, she joined Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and Mark Wahlberg in the Entourage movie trailer, and she’s the most dominant UFC fighter ever, most recently subduing her opponent in just 14 seconds.

Now that Rousey has proved her worth as an athlete and in the theater (if you can call Entourage and Furious 7 theater), she took her talents to the WWE, the perfect marriage of athletics and theatrics. More

Get ready for another week of fun beer tastings, cocktail workshops, theater and music events around Boston. Except on Wednesday, April 1, when there aren’t any good events. APRIL FOOLS! There totally are some good events that day. Man, we got you good. You should have seen your face just then.

Sunday night, Roman Reigns walked into San Francisco’s Levi’s Stadium as the most clearly screwed challenger for the World Title in Wrestlemania history. He left the most interesting character in the WWE. More